Is it not most often so, when we follow the Eagles?

[sovay]

I'm not dead; I'm just not sleeping, which has rather the same effect on my conversation.

But I got a postcard in the mail from the porta dextra of Eboracum, so things could be worse.

Comments

[ap-aelfwine.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry about your not sleeping, and I hope you're feeling better very soon. I'm glad for your postcard. It's more than twenty years since I've seen Eboracum, or perhaps I'd more like myself in calling her Jorvik. A lovely place, and I'd like to see more of her.

Actually, that reminds me of something that came up when I was teaching place names* a couple of weeks ago. We call New York by the name of Nua Eabhrac,** which is only a calque. I started wondering if the Irish name for the city of York comes from Middle English or Norse, as one might first assume on basis of simple history, or if it's not actually from Latin instead. (I'm given to understand that the bh might have been pronounced as a consonant at one time.)

*"Tá mé i mo chónaí i ____"="I live in ____", that sort of thing. In the future I'm going to rewrite the materials I was using, because they had "Tá mé i mo chónaí i bPhiladelphia" as their example, which is really awkward because we don't use "ph". The choice is to treat it as an Irish word and the pretend the first h doesn't really mean anything, in which case it's pronounced "i bila...", or else to follow the sounds and pretend it's written Filadelfia, leading to "i bhFiladelfia" which would be pronounced "i wiladelfia". (The choice folk usually make, in my experience, is just to say that foreign names don't _get_ initial mutations and to write and say "i Philadelphia". TLDR="Philadelphia was a really bad choice for them to make, and I should've caught it and rewritten the materials before classtime." Sorry for wittering so.
**It sounds like noo-uh YOH-ruck when somebody with my accent says it, or noo-uh YOW-ruck when somebody with a more southerly way of speaking says it.

[sovay]

I started wondering if the Irish name for the city of York comes from Middle English or Norse, as one might first assume on basis of simple history, or if it's not actually from Latin instead.

I think the city itself goes Eboracum—Eoforwīc—Jórvík—York via several invasions and at least one folk etymology, but I have no idea how it got into other languages. I know the underlying language is uncertain; presumably Brythonic something, but there are no attestations outside of the Romanized place-name.

[ap-aelfwine.livejournal.com]

but I have no idea how it got into other languages

I wonder if anyone does. Seems like a possible subject for a paper, if one knew how to research it.

I know the underlying language is uncertain; presumably Brythonic something, but there are no attestations outside of the Romanized place-name.

Would make sense, that. Any road, there isn't much Brythonic influence on Irish, from what I'm given to understand*--Latin continues to strike me as maybe the most likely source. I'm trying to think if there's anybody I could ask who'd know enough about loanwords in Old and Middle Irish.

*Although I do remember a lecturer at UCC saying that "Gael" probably came from a Brythonic word meaning "Woods-person, savage."